COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA JOINT COMMITTEES ON TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC UTILITIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, September 28, 2010 10:30 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR., CO-CHAIR COUNCILMAN JAMES KENNEY, CO-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN JANNIE BLACKWELL COUNCILMAN FRANK DiCICCO COUNCILMAN WILLIAM K. GREENLEE COUNCILMAN BRIAN J. O'NEILL COUNCILWOMAN BLONDELL REYNOLDS BROWN RESOLUTION 100515 - Resolution authorizing City Council's Joint Committees on Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment to hold hearings on the economic and environmental impacts that hydraulic drilling of Marcellus Shale will have on Philadelphia and the surrounding region. - - - 2
Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. We apologize for starting a little late. We wanted to give people a chance to get through security that came from far and near to participate in this hearing. We're going to get started. The City Council's Joint Committee on Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment is now in a public hearing to listen to testimony on Resolution No. 100515. In attendance, my Co-Chairman, Councilman Jim Kenney, and my colleague, Councilman Brian O'Neill. A special good morning to those who are listening on radio, WHYY, and thank you for being interested in this very important hearing. Will the Clerk please read the title of the resolution.
A resolution 23 authorizing City Council's Joint Committees on Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment to hold 3 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 hearings on the economic and environmental impacts that hydraulic drilling of Marcellus Shale will have on Philadelphia and the surrounding region.
Thank you. I want to give some brief remarks, because we have an ambitious, to say the least, group of people that want to weigh in on this important matter. So in that regard, I will be brief. I wanted to say that recently I received an award, and it was the eco-champion on some matters, but I wanted to tell folk that any one of the members of this Committee, on this Council, could have easily received that award. My colleague, Councilman Jim Kenney, has welcomed a freshman to the fight and has championed many, many causes that are of concern to our environment, and I wanted to thank my colleagues for attending today. What we hope to do today is to review the facts, dispel the myths and to 4 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 create the best public policy which is in the interest of all Philadelphia. I am not necessarily a long-term environmentalist. I have a lot of titles. One of them is Chairman of this Committee, but the one that I care most about is Grandfather, and what we do today will determine the quality of water in Philadelphia for my grandchildren. We want to take a look at the Marcellus Shale gas reserves and to look at how those important resources are ferreted from the earth. I want to look at fracking today. Natural gas is recognized as a cleaner burning substitute to petroleum fields, if it is safely extracted. It could lessen our dependency on foreign oil. All of Philadelphia's drinking water, however, and 50 percent of it coming from the Schuylkill River, comes up under the Marcellus Shale interest. If something happens and it is determined that an explosion or some mishap happens 5 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 and it drills through rock, our drinking water is in peril, not just Philadelphia but all of the surrounding communities that come from and contribute to the Delaware River Basin. We want to take a look at this. We understand that on the other side of the issue this cheaper form of energy could create jobs and revenues to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and many people wanted to know, Well, why is Philadelphia interested? Because we have to remind people sometimes that Philadelphia is a part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and that this Committee is very concerned about what goes on on the western end of the state because of its impact to our drinking water. So we want to raise the issue, is it more important to do public policy before you do public study, and that's what this hearing is to determine. We know that the Marcellus 6 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Shale has been around for close to 400 million years and that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that if we -- (Applause.)
Thank you. And that if we take a moment to preserve one of our most important resources, our water, we can avoid what happened in the Gulf. I know that if they could turn the clock back, they would have had this hearing, a similar hearing, and been a little more judicious in their study. So with that, will the Clerk read the first panel that will testify.
Just briefly. I would like to thank both Chairmen, you and Councilman Kenney, for bringing this issue to the forefront and not as a taxation issue, which is all I 7 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 and most people have read about, is whether the tax and how much, not whether to do or what to do about it if you're going to do it. I think this record that will be developed here today will be groundbreaking, to use a play on words, with people looking for more information of a scientific and environmental nature when dealing with this issue rather than just is this the golden goose. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you very much. I will remind people that we will accept written testimony, so feel free to abbreviate if you want or elaborate if you must, but you still have five minutes to do all of that. All right? Thank you. Would you read the first group of people ready to testify.
Dr. David Velinsky, 8 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Dr. Joseph P. Martin, Dr. Michel C. Boufadel. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Thank you. Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this crucial issue. I am Dr. David Velinsky and I am the Vice-President for Environmental Research at the Academy of Natural Sciences. The Academy is Philadelphia's natural history museum and has done pioneering research for over 60 years on human impacts on the environment. I direct an interdisciplinary team of scientists and technical staff that focuses on ecological processes and environmental health of natural systems, particularly waterways, watersheds and estuaries. My colleagues, Dr. Boufadel and Dr. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 drilling on the Marcellus Shale to discuss its potential impacts on the environment. I commend the Council for asking Temple University, Drexel University and the Academy to speak at this hearing. Our institutions are one of Philadelphia's important scientific resources, and we are pleased to apply our scientific capabilities to a topic of critical interest to our city and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As our institutions propose to collaborate, Temple University and myself, on further studying the Marcellus Shale, it is appropriate that we are co-presenters, Dr. Boufadel and myself, today. Today I'm going to start with some of the basic science of the Marcellus Shale and the natural gas deposited within it, touch on the drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, and then look at some potential impacts of drilling practice on the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Finally, I will discuss some preliminary research that has been conducted on these impacts and briefly indicate that further research we feel is necessary to resolve a variety of uncertainties that remain. Dr. Boufadel's testimony will focus on the hydro-geology of drilling and potential below-ground impacts. I would also note that the Academy of Natural Sciences does not take a position on the overall advantages or disadvantages of obtaining gas from the Marcellus Shale. We recognize the enormous potential of this resource for both possible economic benefit to the Commonwealth and as an energy source with reduced greenhouse emissions. As environmental scientists, our role is to outline the potential changes to our ecosystem from this process and to point out the relative levels of uncertainty and risk. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 York to West Virginia and lies about a mile or more underground at various places. That's about the distance from City Hall to the Art Museum. As you can see from this map, a significant portion of the Marcellus is located under Pennsylvania, particularly along the Susquehanna Basin and to a lesser extent the Delaware. What is actually the Marcellus Shale? Technically a shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock formed from various types of mud deposited into ancient river bottoms, lagoons or even on the continental shelf. The Marcellus Shale was formed about, as you noted, 300 to 400 million years ago in an enclosed sea that once covered part of Pennsylvania. Microscopic algae produced from the surface waters were deposited in the bottom of the ancient sea that had low oxygen, and then they were eventually covered over with other types of sediments. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the organic-rich sediment degraded over time, forming the organic-rich shale. This process needed the right temperature, pressure and time for methane to form and to remain. The gas is now imbedded in tiny pore spaces within the shale. I would like to point out just from the panel next to that that the Marcellus is only one of many classes of shale that were formed by these ancient geological processes. As you can see from the diagram, in this region there are shales that lie above it and below the Marcellus, and some of them also contain gas. However, until recently, it was not believed that most of the shale gas could be effectively utilized.
Many shale gas deposits have low permeability; that is to say, it is trapped between the grains of the rock and doesn't have enough pressure to be withdrawn by simply boring a well into it. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 advances in drilling, specifically horizontal drilling, combined with the older technique of hydraulic fracking have now provided a means for economically accessing this gas. The method is quite simple. Wells are drilled down to the level of the Marcellus, roughly a couple miles or a mile or so, and the drilling tool is turned horizontally into the shale and then proceeds about a couple miles into the shale. The well is then secured and explosives are introduced into the bottom portion of the horizontal well, and these explosives fracture part of the Marcellus Shale or other types of shale. At this point, water, a few million gallons, is pumped down with chemical and physical additives to open up much more of the shale to allow the gas to escape into the open spaces. The gas then flows through the fractures and is withdrawn through the vertical shaft. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 representatives of the gas and drilling companies to explain any further details or to clarify anything I've missed on the process. The questions we are considering are the potential environmental impacts of the gas drilling. In terms of the overall impacts, as these photos show, gas drilling is an industrial process. There is a footprint of the well pad itself, the extraction and transportation of water to be used for fracturing, the disposal of fracturing water once it has been used, potential impacts on surface and groundwater, and the attendant issues that come from land use changes and fragmentation. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 to the larger gas network. I would like to point out that while hydraulic fracturing and its relationship to water quality has gotten a lot of attention, we need to think about whether there are specific impacts on water quality and quantity, but we also have to look at the larger impacts on the natural resources and natural services, such as water filtration, that are provided by existing ecological systems. I will discuss this latter concept known as ecosystem services in a few moments. On average, about three million gallons of water -- and just to put it into a conceptual nature, that's about four to five Olympic-sized swimming pools -- three million gallons of water used for each well. The effect of this practice on water quantity quite simply depends on where the water is coming from. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 not have a measurable impact on the flow of the river, but three million gallons of water withdrawn from a small upland waterway or maybe a private or public well would have an impact on the local water and its biological diversity of the streams. Also, a number of substances are added to the fracking water to increase its effectiveness in obtaining the gas. These substances include lubricants to reduce friction, biocides and scale inhibitors to prevent bacterial growth, and coarse substances like sand to assist in the fracturing. None of these, for the most part, are found naturally in waterways. While best practices are that none of the fracking water will ever be released to the environment, the level of risk in using these substances must be assessed. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 of salts and leaching of the shale, add a number of substances from the underground environment to the water that is withdrawn. As a result, the withdrawn fracking water has very high levels of total dissolved solids, higher in some cases than seawater. High total dissolved solids can be a serious impairment to water quality and fresh water systems. As this slide shows, the amount of various dissolved materials in the fracking water exceeds by many orders of magnitude that found in typical river water. Do each of these elements result in a biological impact is the question.
A recent EPA report suggests that the amount of dissolved solids that results in the biological impact is much lower than what is found in the frack water itself. Is this a potential impact to the environment? Again, it depends on how the water is handled and where it is disposed of. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 million gallons of fracturing water to the Delaware at Penn's Landing or below would probably have a small effect on the river as a whole. Three million gallons of water spilled into a first- or second-order stream would have a profound impact on the local aquatic system. It should be noted that there is no economic treatment for high TDS other than dilution or an energy-intensive process like reverse osmosis. In other words, at some point, the water will have to be introduced into a larger waterway or injected into deep wells. So to summarize, there are several potential sources of environmental impacts from the gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. First, water withdrawn could have an impact locally on the quantity of water available. Second, there could be impacts on water quality. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 of withdrawn water or other as yet poorly understood processes, and I think Dr. Boufadel will address some of these potential impacts to the groundwater movement and quality. The third area of potential impact is habitat and land fragmentation. This issue is not directly related to the fracturing, but may be the most significant and least considered of the potential problems. Fragmentation of the land surface is simply the reduction in the amount of forest cover and natural open spaces, breaking it up into smaller fragments, and a loss of connectivity between these fragments. In other words, reducing the amount of space available for organisms and interrupting or blocking important ecological processes within the area. The effects of habitat fragmentation due to human alterations of the landscape have been studied for many years and are well understood. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that there are critical sizes of contiguous natural systems that must be present for diverse populations of organisms to function, and we know that these sizes and diversities of organisms are necessary for ecological processes to occur. The latter function, ecological processes, is something called ecological services, because they represent a variety of potentially costly services that human societies get for free from the natural ecosystem. We preserve natural ecosystems because human societies depends on them directly, whether it is for water filtration, air quality or fertile soil. )
The combined effect of habitat fragmentation and potential release of fracturing water into natural systems could have significant impacts on aquatic ecosystem services. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Academy scientists, in collaboration with other local institutions, has shown that headwater forested streams provide the greatest filtration capacity for nutrient removal. Changes in TDS, total dissolved solids, can be toxic both on a chronic and acute scale to aquatic organisms, reducing the size of the biological community and ultimately impacting human needs such as fishery and water quality. In summary, both loss of forest area and introduction of dissolved solids can reduce or impair ecosystem services in small watersheds such as those in the Upper Delaware. In particular, removal of nutrients, a major environmental stressor in agricultural landscapes, can be impaired for fragmentation by changes of biological structure within the watershed. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 activities, nor do we know if there is a cumulative impact of drilling activities and, in particular, possible exposure to water with elevated dissolved solids on the ecosystem services of a small watershed. One of the ways we measure ecological functions is to look at certain key chemical indicators and the abundance of certain types of organisms. Testing the electrical conductivity of a waterway is a good way of assessing total dissolved solids and is a good view proxy for human-caused disturbances. There are also certain organisms, notably amphibians, salamanders, and particular orders of insects that are highly sensitive to degraded waters and contaminated environments. By sampling watersheds for these measures, we are able to get an approximation -- to approximate the relative health of the watershed and the ecosystem services which are capable. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 To at least get preliminary assessment of the cumulative impact of drilling, Academy scientists have been working with a University of Pennsylvania graduate student to collect data on water chemistry and indicator organisms. Let me emphasize that this data is very tentative and would require further review and replication, but it does suggest that the impact of drilling may directly be connected to the density of drilling within a watershed. As you can you see from this figure, the conductivity in a high-density watershed with a lot of drilling activity is much higher, as well as the insects, what they call the EPT, indicators of healthy macro-verter (ph), which is lower, as well as the number of salamanders in this watershed are lower, showing the impact proposally of the drilling within the watershed. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 research can be seen in the graphs. For each of the measures, there was significant differences between the high-density drilling locations and the locations with no or low-density drilling. This suggests that there is indeed a threshold at which drilling, regardless of how it's practiced, will have a significant impact on the ecosystem. Conversely, it also suggests that there may be lower density of drilling at which ecological impact cannot be detected. With this initial data, while I emphasize remains tentative -- and I emphasize remains tentative, we are proposing a comprehensive research plan to the state DEP in the Growing Greener program, which would develop guidelines and assessment tools for regulators and managers to minimize the ecological impact of drilling. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 to better understand the interaction between well density, size of the impacted stream and watershed, and the resulting ecological indicators. We propose to look at multiple streams with varying amounts of drilling and to use a computer-based model to analyze the impact of drilling on deforestation and fragmentation. In conclusion, I would like to thank the Council for the opportunity to discuss these issues.
We believe that gas in the Marcellus Shale may have positive effects on the Pennsylvania economy and there may be possible ways to extract it safely. At this time, however, there remains significant uncertainties, and we urge a cumulative impact assessment on the scale described above before large-scale drilling is undertaken. Thank you very much. )
For interest 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 of time, we're going to allow each of the folk to testify on the panel before we ask questions. I do need to recognize for the record that Councilman Frank DiCicco and Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown have joined the panel. Would you like to say anything?
Will our next panelist begin and read your name into the record and begin your testimony, please.
Sure. Dr. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 engineer, professor at Drexel University, speaking pretty much on my own interest of my evaluation of the situation, not representing any particular entity. What I'll do is, I'll work the opposite side. I'll kind of tell you what will happen if things go right. In the world of engineering, we decide what is going to go right and where we figure out inspection procedures to assure that. I'm originally in the construction business, and we all know about that, is you expect what you inspect. And so this is what could happen. I want to make a story. We're here at the City Council. So the City Council deals in the big picture. I want to be looking at the big picture to say this is an opportunity that we should not pass up. I will make the point that it is in nobody's interest at all for the wells to leak or the things to spill. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Nobody at all. And I'll finish up a little bit of discussion on how the wells are sealed to assure the people. As a background, hydro-fracking has been around about 50, 60 years. It's in thousands and thousands of wells. The point of the practice is to increase the permeability of vertical wells. Fairly recently, down in Texas, they developed a way to marry that practice, hydro-fracking, with directional drilling. What this made, it made possible, to expound my earlier speaker, to exploit the gas in the actual source material. To date, we have extracted gas from sandstone reservoirs to which the gas migrated. Now we're going to the source. With this technology available, it changes everything and you start to see possibility of years. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 two-thirds of the state, there are up to three or four such layers. So once we put in an infrastructure for the Marcellus Shale, it can be reused for these other layers as they go along. So we're looking at the usual world of geological exploration for fuels that the estimates keep going longer and longer, but we have ourselves a sea change and how to acquire it. Now, the big picture here is that the gas is used -- is as versatile as you can get. It's used for heat, PGW, for power, for generating electricity and for transportation. I want to tell you a little thing about the transportation by itself. The transportation effect of using natural gas as a fuel is that, A, it is cleaner burning, which has been discussed, but also generates less greenhouse gases per kilowatt of BTU than you want. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 warehouses where there are natural gas-powered forklifts. Can you imagine a warehouse where you had the forklifts powered by gasoline engines? So my point is made, that the impact of burning natural gas on the air or environment, which is always an issue in Philadelphia as well, is positive, have that being said. Now, to continue this, it turns out that we are running out of gas in the USA. So the sole alternative to provide gas, natural gas, to the citizens of the United States is liquefied natural gas imported. The proper word for this is OPEC No. 2. Many of the nations which have liquefied natural gas sales, including Siberia and Algeria, are not necessarily friendly to us. Trinidad certainly is. But the bottom line is, if we continue to exploit gas resources in Pennsylvania, the money stays in Pennsylvania. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 about local food. Well, this is local fuel. It comes from just to the west of us, parts of the state which are in trouble, and if some parts of the state are in trouble, the City is in trouble. This City is a center of the State of Pennsylvania. Councilman Jones, I appreciate your note there, but I tell that to people now and again, Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the country and unquestionably the center of Pennsylvania.
There are places like Lock Haven which have not had an industry since Piper Cub moved to Florida years ago. I was out there a couple 20 of weeks ago and there's activity. So let's not forget that there. Now, this comes directly to Philadelphia. It's a reliable source. Philadelphia made the decision long ago to make its basic heat for its homes is 32 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 PGW. So either we bring in the gas from Algeria or we bring it in from Centre County. That's what you got. The other thing it's going to be is clean burning. So what I mean out of that, besides being a shale, is to say, I'm an engineer. We have to make it work. That's the idea. There's one other element, that I understand that this is done in some manner at the behest of the PGW to preserve our watersheds. Well, this place we live in is called Penn's Woods. There is no better watershed protection you can imagine than forest. And when we get to the point about the natural gas extraction by the hydro-fracturing and -- not the hydro-fracturing per se, but the directional drilling, we are disturbing -- those pictures look like K-Mart. They are about the size of Daniel Boone's homestead. You use about five to six acres of clearing per square mile of 33 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 extraction. That is as low a disturbance as you can possibly get. I want you to compare this to coal and I want you to compare this to solar. So basically Marcellus Shale extraction by the directional drilling is probably the best forest preservation you can think of and that it's all good. (Audience yelling and booing.)
So the other element, before I get into a little bit of the detail here, is that the water -- first of all, I'm trying to tell you what happens if everything goes right. Okay? The water that is generated, the flow-back water, is very highly sealed, it's fossil water, as was pointed out. Much of it is used for recycling, and there is no easy way to get rid of it. One of the ways to get rid of the salt is to boil it. Well, we're talking about a gas well, so it might entirely be possible, necessary for the gas companies to divert some of their precious gas to 34 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 boil it down, evaporation. But the bottom line is, they cannot discharge it until it's right. So I don't mean to be arrogant in this regard, but the quality of the frack water is not the public's problem. It's the problem of the producer. They cannot discharge it -- (Audience booing.)
Wait a minute. One of the rules in this Chamber is, with my colleagues and sometimes with testimony, we can disagree agreeably, and what we will do is be respectful of people's opinions. We will refute them. We have a balance of testimony, and we're going to hear that. So I know this is an emotional issue for us all, but we're going to listen and be courteous.
We have a DEP. We have an EPA. We have a PWD. Either they're working or they're not. And so I would make a comparison that I had an 35 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 opportunity to visit the Yuengling brewery recently, and in between one vat and another is the water. They can't discharge that water until they cleaned it to the satisfaction of the City of Pottsville and the DEP, and that's all there is to it. Either we have laws or don't. So I'd just like to say that that's a serious issue, the frack water, but it is the issue that has to be solved by the industry. Either that or they're in violation. Now, the other element I want to be sitting here and saying, there's a lot of issues about not doing it right, and it's definitely true. This is an industrial operation, with thousands of wells. If it's not done carefully, things can happen wrong. I just want to close by showing a little technology. In order to get this gas from 7,000 feet down without any leaks, which is to the advantage of two people, the 36 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 gas company, which wants the gas that they generated to come up through that stem 7,000 feet and into their pipelines to sell, A, and, B, the landowners who get a royalty per cubic foot of gas coming through. They want all the gas that's freed down the Marcellus Shale to go up through that pipe, none of it leak into aquifers and so forth. The system that exists that is set up, there's public record on every well drilled in the state, to say is the first thing that they do is they drive a casing 30-inch diameter down through the soil. That's step one. Inside that casing they drill that out. Then they drive a 12-inch diameter casing down through all of the potential aquifers, typically 1,200 feet or something like that, in that order. It depends upon the local geology. Then in between the two casings, they pump concrete. So at that point, we have protection of two layers of steel. Now, either they have welded 37 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 those steel pieces together properly or not. Either they've threaded them or not. But at that point, we have two layers of steel, one layer of cement protecting the aquifer. Then inside of that is a third one, nine inches, which is driven down to the 7,000 feet production level, and so that's going to be sealed with cement in between. The purpose of that cement sealing and that pipe is to prevent leakage of brine and other things. This is sedimentary rock. There's usually layers between the 16 surface and the Marcellus Shale. Many 17 even include fossil water and so forth. 18 The drillers do not want to bother with 19 that. 20 So down to the level, mile and a half below ground surface, there are up to five layers of steel and cement sealing that inside from the outside. I submit to you that is a higher level of standard of sealing than we have 38 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 underneath hazardous waste sites and landfills, including the huge landfills in Falls Township that take Philadelphia's trash, and liners into those landfills protect our largest water intake at Torresdale. So it's a higher standard of protection. So I'm going to close by thanking the City Council for bringing this issue and by saying that this is a phenomenal opportunity. It's going to be a tremendous benefit to the citizens of the city and the state, and it has to actually be enforced. It's an industrial process. There's going to be thousands of feet to be drilled. Lots of things can go wrong, but it's not inherently a bad idea. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We're going to continue on. I need to recognize that my colleague Councilman Greenlee, Bill Greenlee, is here and has joined this panel. 39 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Would you like to make any comments?
We have one more panelist and then we'll open to questions and answers for this panel.
My name is Michel Boufadel. I'm the Professor of Environmental Engineering. I'm also the Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Temple University. I'm also Director of Center for Natural Resources Development and Protection, and our work focuses on large-scale contamination. We try to deal with contaminants on site, because it's in many cases very difficult to bring them to a particular facility to treatment. An example is the Exxon Valdez oil spill. We've been investigating it since 2007, and we have found out and we published the results why the oil still persists 20 years after the spill that 40 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 occurred 1989. Our staff also are involved in the Gulf spill. Regarding this issue, the Marcellus Shale, this is something that we getting involved in in terms of scientists recently. Last year there was talk by Carol Collier, the Executive Director of the DRBC, and I would like to thank her actually to kind of opening my eyes on this issue. And we start looking of what are the challenges dealing with the Marcellus Shale extraction. And as you see from my talk, you notice that one of the main issues was that there's a lack of data. So let's go ahead and start. I would like to acknowledge faculty at Temple University that helped me obtain some of the information, Dr. van Aken, Dr. Judy Zhang, and we have also fine graduate students that helped, and I'm also collaborating with Dr. Tom Graff from University of Hanover, Germany. 41 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 We start with what's called the Precautionary Principle. The Precautionary Principle states that when human activities may lead to morally unacceptable harm that is scientifically plausible but uncertain, actions shall be taken to avoid or diminish that harm. That was agreed upon by the UNESCO, United Nation, and by various world organizations. The Precautionary Principle, the ground for it is not really a zero risk, because we do live in a world that has risk, but it should be based on some kind of acceptable level of risk. So with that in mind, we ask the question, Should the Precautionary Principle apply in the context of natural gas extraction? Is there any potential harm? Is there any potential harm at large? And my answer to that is yes, and -- (Applause.)
/ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 studies, risk impact studies. So as I said early on, when we start checking this issue, we found out that there's really a lacuna, a major lack of information, of objective studies conducted on the topic. There were anecdotal findings here and there. Lots of things were in the media, but really nothing that is published in scientific journals. And our goal for presentation today is to highlight the role of hydro-geology. We think actually the whole issue should be approached using a multi-pronged approach. For example, working with the Academy on the ecological assessment due to their superior expertise in that area, and there could be also air pollution investigation, but I think for the City of Philadelphia, we focus on what happens in the ground and the potential pollution there. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 schematic of how the drilling operation takes place. The well is turned horizontally when it hits the Marcellus Shale layer at 8,000 feet below the surface, and then there's hydro-fracking. So you have that horizontal leg could be maybe 2,000 feet. So every 500 feet they are kind of bound together and then the hydro-fracking occurs. Water is pumped down at the pressure of 15,000 psi. The duration should be, depends, three, four hours, sometimes more. And during the operation, there is, from what we understood talking with the industry, that there is a major focus on ensuring that the fractures do not propagate outside the Marcellus Shale layer. That said, however, our question is, What if the gas escape? What if the fluid escape? And he will -- we consider one scenario. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 compounds. It contains compounds that affect the immune system. This is what's being injected in the ground. Some compounds are carcinogenic, others are mutagenic, and you have endocrine disruptors that affects actually the growth, especially of children. So -- and in addition, when the water goes down, it picks up with it additional hazardous chemicals such as arsenic and what's called non-naturally occurring radioactive matter. So there's a concern that if that water in any way reaches the surface or reaches the aquifers, which are maybe the top thousand feet of the ground. This is top view of the terrain in New York. You can see Lake Ontario there. The study was conducted for the State of New York, and we are just below it. It is just showing what they call the linemen. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the ground. So you could see from that that it's not really a smooth surface. It's not like putting that everything is smooth. So there are cracks and fractures and joints and faults in any geology. These are some of the pictures. Again, you have the citations published in Tectonophysics, 2002. You can see on the left, for example, there is a hammer put there for scale. So these are -- there are some fractures in the rock, and we think that these fractures could actually conduct fluids up to the surface, depending on the operation itself. You have the same pictures also on the right for a larger area. So these rocks, it's not like that happens only at the surface. These rocks extend -- the formation extends down to thousands of feet. So there is nothing to say that what's found at a thousand feet below the surface is different from what you see here. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 So, again, this is what the ideal situation, the fractures remain in the Marcellus Shale layer, which is maybe 200 feet thick, but let us consider a scenario. This is here where -- this is a simulation. This is not -- we didn't get these data from the field. We just assuming that there are fractures in the ground. You can see there's this horizontal bar at the bottom. This is about 7,500 feet below the surface. The dimensions are given in meter, so every thousand meter is 3,000 feet. So what we going to do now is, we're going to show a simulation where there's an injection and there is the cracks in the ground.
Essentially what could happen is that you will have an upward link or shooting of the injected fluid maybe 2,000 feet up or they could be to a distance of maybe 3,000 feet from the surface. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 injected, where they stay. I mean, we do know that they don't disappear. They are somewhere there in the ground. And based on the injection and the presence of fractures, there's tendency for them to go up and not down, and we think that could be one possible scenario. The problem is that we don't have these data. We don't have anything to tell us exactly how are the fractures in the ground. Now, what would make this situation more dire is that if you have refracking of the well. If someone comes and refrack the well again, that could bring these hazardous chemicals closer to the surface. And, finally, we need to know that water in the ground is not really stagnant. I mean, it moves slowly, but there's always an interest in understanding how long will it take to get from point A to point B. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 wells for deep-well injections for hazardous chemicals, they are required to explain or to predict the locations of any chemicals they put within 10,000 years. So any chemicals, when you're dealing with deep-well injections, any chemical that is injected in the ground, the company that is injecting it needs to explain what will happen to that chemical in 10,000 years. And these are very firm guidelines established by the EPA. So the long-term effects when dealing in groundwater, especially deep groundwater, has always been there. Here is another situation where you have -- as you remember, four million gallons are injected. One million gallon comes up.
This one -- no. 23 I don't remember. The source actually, it was conducted from New York, but I'm not sure of the actual -- 49 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Okay. Thank you. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It's from the Columbia University "Urban Design" study, and this is a picture of Northern Pennsylvania.
Northern Pennsylvania? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Where they store the flow-back.
Thank you. Could you repeat that so people listening on the radio can hear what she said?
Well, she's saying this is in Northern Pennsylvania that this fit. Okay. So this is a situation where you get -- after you inject the water to frack the formation, you get one-quarter of it back, and they are put in some situations in these open pits 50 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that they are lined and they go to keep them until the trucks, they get hauled off site. So I'm going to just focus your eyes on the bottom right. And then next slide. So this is the size of football field, and it's one or two feet deep. So the question here is, What happens if you have leakage from these pits? We need to know first that the brine in that pit is six times more concentrated than seawater. So it has lots of salts. And because of that, it's much heavier than fresh water. So it's not going to move with the fresh water. It's going to have a mind of its own. So you're going to have something like a lava lamp effect, and you will see it next. So this is an illustration of cross-section in an aquifer. In both cases, the top and the bottom, you are 51 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 assuming that you have leakage from the pit. There are these sticks sticking in the blue area on the top and the bottom panel. These are monitoring wells. Let's say they went down 30 feet or 50 feet. And the edge of the rectangle represent the bedrock so water doesn't go through it. And in this scenario, we assume the water moves from the left to the right. So once you have leakage, the idea that you put the monitoring wells downstream and you'll be able to capture that plume, but in this case, the top situation doesn't account for the density of the plume. The lower panel does, and that's what we think, you know, once you -- as the latest technology or latest science or latest models, to predict the behavior when you have spillage. So next slide.
Before you move, do I understand those that look like nails, those are sensors?
These are 52 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 sensors, yes.
And do I understand that because of the depth of the potential brine, it's right under it and it couldn't be detected?
So this is after ten years. After ten years, your sensor is telling you that there's a problem in the lower panel. After ten years, now there's a problem. By that time, your aquifer is completely contaminated. And then you continue, 12 years. Next one, 13 years here you can see on the right-hand side, the bottom panel. You have the water starts up-welling, and this is very natural. Water does move uphill. That's why we have springs. So it depends on the 53 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 pressure behind it. So then the water start then up-welling and then -- keep going, please. Next one we have situation now where we have the most -- the closest well or the monitoring sensor to the pit is contaminated, and the farthest one is contaminated, but the middle one is not. And now we start thinking that the neighbor to the right has some pollution problem and then it is spilling back to our yard. So the idea here is, we just need more science than we are usually dealing with when addressing Marcellus Shale issues. And then there's a tendency for the brines to stay much longer in the ground compared to other chemicals. This is just a movie of what I explained. So it does up-well. And imagine that you have the Delaware River or the Schuylkill River on the right, the bottom right. It will start seeping into 54 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 it over a very long duration. Here we predict it to be 200 years. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It's not brine. It's sulfuric acid.
People will be given an opportunity to speak. I see enthusiasm, excitement in the audience, but we're going to follow our process and you'll get an opportunity.
Which leads us to the conclusions. So the groundwater containing hazardous chemicals could seep into the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers for a long duration. Dilution is going to be a big help, and those are the fact that Philadelphia is relatively at the large distance from where the main drilling activity taking place. There's about 100 mile, 150 miles, depending of how you measure it. One of the concerns, though, remains endocrine disruptors, because they are very potent even at low 55 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 concentration. Endocrine disruptors, they are like hormones. They have the ability to, for example, feminize male fish. So they could affect the environment in a drastic way. And although for maybe water treatment or drinking water treatment, I leave it up to the PWD to discuss how will they deal with that. And, again, the situation would be worse during low flows. I get a lot of data from the PWD, the Philadelphia Water Department, and we know that there are periods where the flow is maybe ten percent of the average. So those durations then, whatever is spilled there, it might not dilute as much to make it below the threshold. Our recommendations, I think we need to start thinking long term. The monitoring is good, but monitoring without deep understanding is going to tell us that in two years, three years, there will be no problems. As we fully 56 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 know dealing with Superfund sites, dealing with oil spills, once things go into the ground, the time scale has to go up from months to years to tens of years to maybe hundred years. So as I mentioned early on, for deep-well injection, if one want to inject hazardous chemicals at 10,000 feet below the surface, they need to prove that these chemicals do not get anywhere in harm within the 10,000 years. So they need to know what happen for the next 10,000 years. (Applause.)
And the petition for a deep-well injection that was in 1991 study, the petition, the cost by the industry, the science needed or the engineering studies needed, it used to cost about 300,000. I think the permit for a well in Pennsylvania is maybe 2,500. So it used to take the EPA --
Could you repeat that, the fees. 57 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
The fees, about 300,000 for a deep-well injection. This is the study needed to submit a petition. But here if we want to get a license for a well, my understanding is about 2,500. And then -- the EPA, it used to take them one, full staff, one year to evaluate the permit or the petition, and I'm sure the DEP -- I don't think they have the staff to spend a year on each application, or person year. So I think that's why I say the deep-well injection should be relied upon. I'm not saying they should be enforced hundred percent, but they should be relied upon, because really the geologic information is key, and the assumption that whatever we inject there would never reach the surface is not sure. I mean, it behooves people who want to inject things in the ground to tell us or to assure us that they will never reach the surface. Thank you. 58 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 (Applause.)
Well, I want to recognize that we've been joined by Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell and wanted to know if any of our new Councilpersons wanted to make a statement at this point before we enter into questions. (No response.)
My first question is, let's talk about for a minute what we all agree on and what I heard out of the testimony so that folks out there can put their arms around the enormous size of this. Is this one of the largest finds in our nation?
Someone gave the analogy of OPEC. Is that correct? Like this find is like finding oil in 59 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Saudi Arabia?
More like Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, 20, 40-year projection, not -- Saudi Arabia has got oil forever.
And can you speak into the mike, because people cannot --
The amount of oil that's in and around the Persian Gulf is orders of magnitude beyond anything anywhere else in the world. What we're talking about with the three or four layers of organic shale under the Allegheny Plateau is kind of on the order of the oil that was discovered in North Slope, Alaska. They got about 20, 18 years. It's starting to wind down and 19 going to the next place. 20 So it's a second tier, second 21 tier of -- the question was magnitude. 22 The magnitude is the second tier from 23 Saudi Arabia, but similar to Alaska, 24 similar to Beaumont, to Spindletop in 25 Texas. 60 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Well, in terms of -- I know that what we read, it says that it could support the U.S. for two years.
What I said, the amount is 500 trillion cubic feet of gas, and it is about years of supply. 15 Maybe I'm off on that one, but I think 16 it's -- there's 500 trillion cubic feet 17 of gas in the Marcellus that they think 18 is obtainable. They haven't actually 19 obtained it, so they don't really know. 20
And I know later on we're going to hear from the drillers, but we're going to make a lot of millionaires; is that correct? Is that right?
I didn't hear. 61 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
We are going to make a lot of people rich; is that correct?
We will not only make -- excuse me -- a lot of people rich, but we will restore the economy of ordinary people in the central PA.
Everybody gets paid, but the question becomes, are we taking the steps -- because it's not like the resources aren't there -- to do the proper planning and proper studying? 62 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 If we're talking about major reward, can we be a little cautious and deliberate in our planning of taking this resource from the earth and making sure that everybody -- it's a win-win scenario? Does everybody agree -- (Applause.)
Wait a minute. So everybody agrees that we should be taking all appropriate steps to make sure that we are safeguarded? So we do agree on those two principles?
Now, with that, there were some interesting charts 63 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 and graphs, and you had some conclusions, but I did not see them in your -- and recommendations in your testimony. Was it in there?
All right. In your presentation from the Academy, Doctor, you mentioned what was in the actual solution that goes into the ground.
Of which, which ones of those chemicals concerns you most? Is it the salt? Is it --
I think it's the sum -- for me right now, just without going and knowing the biological impact 64 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 of every individual chemical, it's the sum total, the total dissolved solids. It's 80,000 milligrams per liter of dissolved salts in the water compared to a background of maybe 100 to 200 milligrams per liter. So that if you were to take, for instance, even road salt, that kind of thing, and put it into a small stream, the various organisms would just go belly up.
So do we all agree -- and I'm trying to get on the things we do agree -- that those chemicals that were listed by you are in the solution that all of these 50 or so drillers use? Because I understand some people don't even list what the chemicals are because there's some patent protection.
The chemicals that I listed in my second chart were ones that came out of the frack water of sort of after dissolution or leaching of the shale. Those aren't in the solution 65 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that went down.
That's what came back. And the level of dissolved solids varies from one well to another. What I showed is maybe one well. It's not indicative of every single well.
So is there a uniform solution that all people that are drilling use?
They all put -- this is going for 50-year development of the practice. Given that, there are certain functions that the chemicals that they add provide, that they don't do it just to do it. They have a reason for doing it and they solve a problem. They have to put in some sort of biocide to keep -- we've injected air into there -- to keep bacteria from blocking the pores. They have to put in the sand to hold up the things. So probably I would imagine 66 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 that most of the drillers put in the same mix, but they all have the same set of things they want to accomplish with the mix. So a possible scenario that I'm pretty sure all my colleagues would agree with me is do like surface industries have done, find ways to accomplish something with less toxic material. That would be a direction to go in.
I appreciate your comment, but my question is, is there a standard knowledge of what we are putting in the ground by driller to driller?
I think the gas company representative could answer that better, but from what I understand, each driller uses their own proprietary solution. They're all slightly different. Some contain the same chemical, the biocide, but they're all slightly different. I do not know exactly what all the little chemicals are that are put in. 67 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
And it depends on the drillers themselves. So you could have -- it's not on the company that is actually hiring the driller. But in terms of contaminants, there are endocrine disruptors. I think these are -- those should be major concern, because there are a small concentration. They are very important. I mean, they could enter into a stream and them feminize the male fish. And it's not like at one part per million or one part per billion. You could have one kind of drop in trillion and then they could be potent in the environment. So I think these are the things that for Philadelphia we should be maybe concerned about the most. There's no 22 doubt for quality of our water, I agree with Dr. Velinsky that these are solid. They're going to be affecting the streams far from here, and then eventually there 68 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 would be deterioration. But I think these particular compounds that are still -- that could be potent at very low concentrations should be top of our priority.
Even though they don't tell the public, do they tell someone, some regulatory agency, that this is what I'm putting in the ground so that you know?
Yes. It's on the well record that's filed at the DEP, that they have to list the materials they put in. They don't necessarily have to put in the concentrations. But that's in the public record for every well that's drilled.
We injected this, we injected that, we injected so many barrels of water, such-and-such a chemical mix and so forth. What is not fully disclosed -- some of them are 69 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 disclosing -- are the concentrations, but the contents are there.
Point of information, Mr. Chairman. For further -- in an attempt to further clarify your question, so are we hearing that there are no standard protocols, if you will, that the public is uniformly made aware of?
There are no protocols, one. And, two, the public is not uniformly made aware of whatever the substance they're getting at the end of the drill? Because I'm trying to climb this mountain in learning. 70 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
That's correct. And one of the things is that the drillers may say we're putting a chemical in and they give you the trade name, but they don't tell you the specific chemical. Is it ethylene glycol at five percent. Is it whatever chemical to -- a specific chemical. They tell you a generic name that they came up with.
I'll amend my statement to confirm with that. They are putting in what they're doing. It is not the specific chemical formula, and that may be behind a trade name. I correct my statement.
I agree. That is, to say the least, one of the things that we're going to pay particular attention to, some type of right to know and some type of uniformity among drillers. If you're talking about 50 71 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 different companies and 50 different soups, we need -- this Councilwoman right here did menu labeling on food. I think at least that on chemicals going into the earth might be something that we look at. I want to change gears a little bit and talk about the microorganisms, and I want to thank all of you for helping to make laypersons understand this process, because I want to make sure that -- there are three doctors there. I don't think there's an engineer or doctor here. So thank you for helping us to understand, but in my limited understanding, you're putting pressure into the ground to create and ferret the gases to rise to the top, and in that fracturing, you have what look like on some of your illustrations hundreds of cracks and crevices that this gas is lodged in between. What percentage of the extracted chemical actually comes back once you put it down? 72 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Almost none. The chemicals that are added are organic. I'm not --
Sure. The chemicals that are added are mostly organic materials, and so they're absorbed by the organic material. The return water issue is, as my colleagues have said, the natural fossil brine that's coming up. But the material that's injected in controlled amounts -- and I'm not trying to say I understand exactly what it is -- is all, from a scientific point of view, organic compounds, which are sorbed onto the organic shale.
Will the other panelists -- do you agree with that or is there a contrary point of view?
I mean, we don't have any data to indicate that they get absorbed to the shale layer. I think 73 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 usually when -- it's like passing water through your filter. If you pass it very slowly, yes, you could clean the water, but then if you pass it very fast, there's a chance that maybe half of the water will be cleaned, the other half is not. So we don't know really. I mean, we don't know how long the contact time between the injected water and the shale, and based on that, I doubt that most of it will be absorbed to the shale. (Applause.)
I think part of your question was how much water comes back. I think it's variable. I don't think all -- three million gallons go down. I don't think three million gallons come out right away. I think some of it stays down there. Some of it comes back slowly. Some of it comes back right away. As to the point of the organic chemicals, most of the ones that I do 74 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 know of have what they call low partitioning to organics, to other organics. So they'll stay within the water. They will not partition to an organic matrix. They'll stay dissolved in the water. Like ethylene glycol, that will stay in dissolved.
I want to hit another topic of the microorganisms that are impacted by the solution, and from my daughter's point of view, who is an ergonomist, that these interactions between microorganisms are very important to the ecosystem. What does this do to that?
Well, I mean, basically -- I think getting to the point of some of the -- well, first off, the microorganisms are what produce the gas to begin with way back when. I don't 75 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 know if that's what your question was.
And the second point is that if these -- now we're going up to the surface water. If some of these streams are impacted to where the total dissolved solids or specific chemicals hinder their growth, these microorganisms, you'll get less removal of nutrients from that stream system. Certain processes that -- these microorganisms need to have a nice good environment for them to process, let's say, nitrogen to remove it. Otherwise, you'll get this protection of that -- of the source water or the Upper Delaware will be reduced and you'll have to start treating the water down here more.
Yes. Councilwoman Brown. 76 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Let me thank you all for your extraordinary expertise and teaching us as we go down this road on what's going to be appropriate and correct at the end of the day. In the interest of full disclosure, I should state for the record that on March 25th of this year, I introduced a resolution calling on the Delaware River Basin Commission to halt the fracturing until we have a full environmental impact assessment. (Applause.)
What I am excited about is that Councilman Jones has actually taken this to the next level where we now dissect why we need to do this. (Applause.)
So with that said, I always want to look at lessons learned. When we look at the debacle, 77 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 travesty that we saw in the Gulf, what are the lessons learned as we look to plan and look forward with the proposals around Councilman Jones' resolution? What is the number one or two lessons learned? I'd like to hear from each of you.
I mean, to me I think what Dr. Boufadel had as his third slide on that Precautionary Principle, that's the lesson learned. I mean, we need to think -- there is this potential. We need to understand it, to get the scientific information and put the regulations and the programs in place that will limit any impact. We don't know all the impacts. We won't know for a while, but we need to plan as if there's going to be impacts so we can minimize those as best as possible.
I think -- I mean, surely I agree with what 78 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Dr. Velinsky said, but I also think in terms of studies, sometime we hear like there's the EPA study. So let's wait until that is done. There's also studies that is earmarked. I think we need to start studies now, and they don't have to be really grand. They don't have to be $5 million studies. The criminalist thing is the way we learn about things, we learn little by little. I mean, we don't take a kid until they are tenth grade and then we give them ten books and say, Okay, now go ahead and learn. We teach them little by little, and that's what we need to do. We need to learn as much as we can from anywhere. Some of the questions mentioned, for example, now, that could be dealt with within a month, and then we would know how much of the organics stay or don't stay and et cetera for other issues. So I feel like we need to 79 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 initiate studies immediately, and they don't have -- (Applause.)
And let me attempt to get clarity from your answer. When you say "we," who is "we"?
I mean, the community, anyone that is interested, anyone who is trying to understand what's happening, maybe the City of Philadelphia.
Including the industry. Actually, I mean -- because I deal with oil spills, I meet with many -- there are -- it's interesting, because the oil industry is always viewed in a certain way. However, the oil industry has put a lot of effort into preventing oil spills, and there are conferences organized by oil industries to deal with oil spills. I think we should have 80 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 something similar maybe by the gas industry where the scientists, not the policymakers, but the scientists share ideas and which is the better -- for the better of everyone.
What value might there be in a study where there's a collective set of stakeholders? Councilman Jones is suggesting university community, the industry, the environmentalists, citizens who have to cope with this at the end of this road versus one particular world. Because so typically, if it's one world, then the opposition world, those are hands down on it. What's your view or take on that?
Well, I think that's definitely the best way to go about it, to have studies that we have many stakeholders. There are sometimes advantages for having entities such as universities and Academy involved in 81 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 these studies, because the goal is, there's no liability. The EPA study most likely will -- we will hear nothing until it is done three years from now, whereas for studies conducted by any of us, you know, as far as we get data, we would just share them, because that's what we do.
Well, I think the university research is a wonderful thing, but the question you asked was BP versus Marcellus Shale. Let's go back over the BP thing. What went wrong? First, a horrible amount of arrogance to say that you could predict, project what you did at shallow levels to a mile and do no 20 tests of any form. Things failed under a mile deep that had never been tested anywhere close to that. So they basically dismissed the engineering community. This is what we do.
Who is 82 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 "they"?
BP. Second, the BP spill issue came about through contractual after UL fawns (ph) kind of stuff. BP said it owned it, these guys owned it. Nobody had responsibility. It was button, button, who got the button? The whole contractual responsibility, it took the Coast Guard a week to figure out who actually owned it. So that's a contractual thing, how you do things. Those two things made it all a disaster. Arrogance and doing something far beyond putting a man on the moon without ever sending up John Glenn for suborbital. That's essentially what they did. So these are not scientific. These are ordinary practice things, how you do. PWD scales up carefully from one system to another. Now, the problems that we've had in the Marcellus, including one was an explosion in Clearfield County, was 83 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 exactly the same, that nobody knew who was responsible. A bunch of amateurs came in and did this. It had nothing to do with science. It had something to do with contractual law and inspections into ordinary care stuff. So if you're going to connect BP and Marcellus, the situation, the reform -- much as I love scientific research, we're all brothers in this, the reform of how you're disclosing who is responsible for what, how you prove that what you've done, I will go back to my story that Marcellus Shale -- not Marcellus Shale; the hydro-fracking is 50 years old. In Texas, they developed the idea of the hydro-fracturing compared with the directional drilling. Lots of problems happened there. They figured them out. So what I'm trying to say is, the engineering capability to do this is there, but it's pretty obvious that nobody knows how the work is contracted 84 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 through subcontractors or something and we've already had one problem. But it's a smaller scale -- I don't mean to denigrate the people in Clearfield County -- of exactly what happened at BP. Keep in mind, remember when the spill happened, nobody knew who owned it. Nobody knew who was responsible.
Could I do a follow-up, please, sir, before you -- I'd be happy to hear from you. In your opening statement -- I'm trying to find the quote so I cannot misrepresent here -- you said -- your very opening statement. Do you remember what you said in your very opening statement?
I don't have a written one. I said if everything goes 85 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 right, this is what will happen.
If everything went right, this is the benefit. Real quick, if things go wrong, what would be your nightmare?
My nightmare would be the spill of frack liquid when it's being carried from a site to some sort of a treatment. People do get in accidents, trains do derail, things like that. The nightmare is nightmares. Everything is fairly controlled at the site if we fix these contractual issues. The state has monitors. Maybe they don't have enough, but the nightmare that I have is carrying a million gallons of frack water. When they finish an area to recycle it and it's too salty to deal with, it's being carried. Then we are dealing with a low-level variation of how do we move 86 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 nuclear waste casts in Nevada. That's my nightmare of a spill of salt water on the road.
All right. We're going to move along. I want to thank you all for your insights, and we will use them, as my colleague says, as lessons learned and recommendations taken. Would you, Clerk, introduce the next panel.
Kathryn Klaber, Marcellus Shale Coalition; Bernard Brunwasser, the Philadelphia Water Department; and Craig White, Philadelphia Gas Works. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Thank you. We have two mikes for three people, so you can begin your testimony. Please read your name into the record. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 the Joint Committees of Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment. I am Bernard Brunwasser, Philadelphia Water Commissioner, and I'm here to testify on Resolution 100515. I have some of my experts in the back, including Deputy Commissioner for Environmental Services, Howard Neukrug, and the Department's Director of Planning and Research, Dr. Christopher Crockett, and also Ms. Kelly Anderson, who is our Manager of Source Water Protection. They're all recognized experts in their field. I'm going to vary a bit from my written statements, which I believe you already have. Philadelphia Water Department's core mission is the provision of safe, high-quality drinking water to its nearly two million customers in the Philadelphia region. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 extends to the stewardship of our region's water resources. To this end, our department has closely followed the discussions surrounding natural gas drilling to better develop our understanding of the full range of land and water resource impacts drilling might have. We have been active, full partners in the Marcellus Shale discussion. Please do not mistake our rigorous scientific approach for nonchalance. We are pragmatic in our understanding that gas drilling, when done properly, can offer many economic and clean energy benefits. But we are also vigilant in our insistence that drilling is managed with all of the necessary regulations and oversight in place to protect our watershed environment. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Protection and the Delaware River Basin Commission have already put towards ensuring that natural gas extraction is both economically beneficial and environmentally responsible. The Water Department also greatly appreciates our environmental partners, including American Rivers, the Delaware Riverkeepers and a variety of public and educational institutions, that raise public awareness around drinking water issues. We embrace public engagement as an incredible opportunity and a teaching moment, particularly today, for all environmental challenges. As many of you are aware, the Water Department will be investing nearly $2 billion over the next years to 20 manage storm water as a natural resource 21 and to revitalize our precious rivers and 22 streams. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 providing access to safe drinking water for all. The Water Department has been a leader in watershed protection since the 1860s when the Fairmount Park System was formed to protect the Schuylkill River from pollution. Today, watershed protection is a core function of the Department, as we have championed regional watershed planning with our upstream municipalities and counties to develop a holistic plan that addresses water quality and quality of life for everyone in the Delaware and Schuylkill watersheds. We have completed drinking water protection plans that look at the chronic and acute impacts of such things as new development and redevelopment and the impact of clearing natural lands, acid mine drainage, aging sewer infrastructure, agricultural practices on water quality, volume demand in growing communities and utilities, accidents and spills involving hazardous material. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 do this every day. Natural gas drilling is just one more potential water quality challenge, albeit a very important one, that has been added to our watershed management strategy. I'd like to share just a few examples of the actions that the Water Department has taken or is currently engaged in to gain a better understanding of the potential impact of Marcellus Shale and to ensure that the appropriate protection measures are in place.
First, the Water Department has communicated and is in continual discussion with the EPA and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, or PADEP, concerning its water supply issues relating to Marcellus Shale drilling, particularly the disposal of wastewater and degradation of water quality due to land clearing and compaction of land. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 Committee, which is discussing monitoring strategies to capture any effects of drilling, and we chair the DRBC's Toxics Advisory Committee. PWD, the Water Department, is currently maintaining and planning for the expansion of the Delaware Valley Early Warning System, a one-of-a-kind communication tool and spill response information and monitoring system developed by the Water Department for the Delaware River Basin. That's been in place since the middle of this decade. The Water Department is encouraging DRBC to require drill pad operators and all parties with permits relating to natural gas extraction and disposal to join and participate in the Delaware Valley Emergency Warning System. The PWD is developing partnerships with academic institutions to perform research surrounding Marcellus Shale drilling activities and water quality impacts. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 monitoring equipment at its Baxter Water Treatment Plant on the Delaware to track sodium chloride levels in the river, which may help indicate the impact of drilling wastewater. We are also evaluating how to monitor other shale-related parameters at the plant. Finally, we are participating in a Water Research Foundation workshop in October focusing on bringing together regional and national water suppliers, regulators and the scientific community to identify potential risk assessment projects associated with natural gas drilling. The workshop is intended to improve the understanding of, A, the potential risks of hydraulic fracturing and associated natural gas development activities to drinking water supplies, and, B, strategies for reducing or eliminating any such identified risks. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 our citizens to provide them with safe, top-quality drinking water and to protect and preserve the water resources of our region. That ends my informal testimony.
I'm sorry. Did you use "workshop"? Could you restate that for people who may have missed that, and when they can have audience participate in that. COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: We are participating in a Water Research Foundation workshop in October focusing on bringing together regional and national water suppliers, regulators and the scientific community to identify potential risk assessment projects associated with natural gas drilling. The workshop is intended to improve the understanding of the potential risks of hydraulic fracturing and associated natural gas development activities to drinking water supplies, and strategies 95 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 for reducing or eliminating any such identified risks.
We would be interested -- it's nice for elected officials to have hearings like this. It informs the public. It is equally, if not more, important for practitioners like yourself to get together to give us that information. So I would like to make sure that we have a balance of people that are reviewing this and participating in that. So it's important to get that out to the public and those interest groups that might want to participate in that. We'll hold questions for you until we hear from the other panelists. COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Sure.
It's just about good afternoon. Councilman Jones, members of Council, thank you for the opportunity to appear here today. My name is Kathryn Klaber and I'm President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 MSC was formed in 2008 and has since grown to include more than 130 members representing the majority of companies now operating in the Marcellus. We are a young organization, vibrant and growing, a reflection of the growing recognition of the benefits, economic and environmental, that Marcellus brings to Pennsylvania's business and residents. The Marcellus Shale Coalition was founded to advocate the responsible development of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale geological formation in Pennsylvania and the enhancement of the Commonwealth's economy that can be realized by this clean-burning energy source. The members of the Coalition work with our partners across the Marcellus play to address issues with regulators, with government officials and the people of the Commonwealth about all aspects of producing natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 resources safely and responsibly for the benefit of Pennsylvanians. I welcome any chance to return here to Philadelphia where I started my career and family, living right down Market Street in Old City. When I worked in the environmental field at that time, not knowing where I would find myself more than a decade later, it was commonplace in the five-county Philadelphia area to look for opportunities to replace fuel oil with natural gas in order to meet our emission standards. I wrote those permit conditions, and companies applied them, even at a time when natural gas prices were high. Now that natural gas prices nationally are low and stable, a result of significant supply from shale gas development across the nation, the use of clean-burning natural gas becomes even more viable for a city like Philadelphia. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 today's hearing, I wanted to provide you with some details in my related background. While in college in central Pennsylvania, created a major that was not yet common on campuses, Environmental Science, and through my coursework and two summers of research funded through the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation on water quality in the Chesapeake Bay, gained an early appreciation of the critical importance of water quality in our Commonwealth. Spending the next ten years in the environmental field and around the nation, I obtained hands-on experience in permitting, designing and installing environmental treatment technologies for a wide range of industries. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 experiences formed the foundation and my passion for working in this place at this time in the development of the Marcellus Shale, and I'm privileged to be here and talk about this topic here today. The natural gas industry is bringing huge investment capital and the associated job creation to Pennsylvania. The Marcellus presents a very special opportunity for all of us in the Commonwealth, and we must take care to foster this development with modernized statutes in a competitive, secure, regulatory framework. We also must continue to keep public safety and environmental protection as the cornerstone of how we conduct business. With the industry's contribution of more than $1 billion in revenue to state and local governments this year alone, there is a lot riding on our collective deliberations and actions. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 State University researchers conducted for the industry last year. It projected more than eight billion in annual economic value and nearly 90,000 jobs created by Marcellus development to date. And whereas this macroeconomic assessment is important for many uses, it does not capture by, in and of itself, the hearts and minds of Pennsylvanians. 8 billion in fact was collected by landowners in Pennsylvania in 2008 alone.
It will take stories of family members and neighbors and good-paying jobs in the industry and its supplier companies. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 investments in Pennsylvania because of new business from Marcellus development. We spent some time out here with the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center working with their members to understand where the manufacturing opportunities are in this industry. There are firms growing in Philadelphia to serve our industry, environmental consulting firms, law firms, water management companies and pipeline firms. There are many benefits, including the cost of energy, the home heating benefits in the lower costs, the electricity, stable costs from gas and obviously the business costs when it's more stable to heat your business and to fire those processes the more competitive those businesses can be. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 environmental protection - well construction and hydraulic fracturing and the water management process. First, well construction. The development of a well -- and we heard this from the former panel -- and the associated casing and cementing of well bores is a critical process to both the economic viability of the $4 million investment that is being made per well as well as obviously the safety and the environmental protection. org, that shows that the technology that's used in a way that is very enlightening. Industry knows from drilling thousands of gas wells that the proper drilling casing and cementing is essential to secure both the maximum yield and protect the surrounding water tables. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 regulatory agency to determine and impose new regulations and best practices as it relates to well construction. This issue has recently been addressed in significant detail by the state's Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board of the DEP, and that group of regulators, industry representatives, academia and representatives of the public interest spent many hours and multiple sessions developing a sound approach to updating PA Code Chapter 78 covering the 14 construction of oil and gas wells. That 15 rule-making includes numerous 16 modifications regarding the drilling, 17 casing, cementing, testing, monitoring 18 and plugging of oil and gas wells to 19 enhance the protection of drinking water 20 supplies. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 construct and regulate natural gas wells. And the industry itself imposed implementation of the rules even before the effective date. An additional item of note about the Chapter 78 rules relates to the disclosure of chemicals used in the development process. 5 percent a mixture of other compounds. This information has been available to regulatory agencies, including the DEP and OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, for years. But to make our operations even more transparent, operators will include information on their hydraulic fracturing chemicals to DEP under the new Chapter 78 rules in each well completion report. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 well. And this is yet another example of the fact that these chemicals in fact are not a secret, but have been and will continue to be available to regulators in the public in a more transparent way, which is certainly what the public demands and deserves. As you may know from an announcement made earlier this year by Governor Rendell, DEP will be hiring even more staff to help implement these rules. The Marcellus Shale Coalition issued a statement following that announcement earlier this year, and it stated this, in part: "The Marcellus Shale Coalition has consistently supported the hiring of additional DEP staff to monitor natural gas wells in the Commonwealth, as reflected in its proactive endorsement of permit fee increases in 2009 to add and train new inspectors. Our support continues with the announcement of an additional 68 DEP staff dedicated to the oil and gas program. /ENVIRONMENT - RES.
" The second topic relates to hydraulic fracturing and water management. This is another area where Pennsylvanians deserve to get the facts about water management for Marcellus Shale development. The actions of industry, the regulatory agencies and the legislature must be based upon these facts. Furthermore, we must all work together to make sure certain that we are responsive to the concerns of the public. The fact is that Pennsylvania's regulations governing the use and management of water needed to drill a Marcellus well are among the most stringent in the nation and ensure the protection of the Commonwealth's water resources. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 business is to go state to state and evaluate the effectiveness of oil and gas rules in state programs. Water withdrawals from streams and rivers must be approved, including the withdrawal location, the amount of water required, as well as detailed storage, treatment and management plans. The industry currently treats or recycles all of its flow-back water. Many operators have achieved 100 percent recycle, with an average across the industry of more than 60 percent. Recycling greatly reduces the amount of water that is treated and returned to the waterways of Pennsylvania and also reduces the amount of fresh water that is withdrawn. There are more than a dozen approved water treatment facilities available to treat flow-back water, with plans for additional capacity underway. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 investment in advanced flow-back water treatment capabilities and recycling technologies, and will continue to innovate in this important area for natural gas production and environmental protection. With respect to the disclosure of the components of the fracturing fluid and notwithstanding statements to the contrary, this information is available in multiple places, and would be glad to answer further questions on that from what the previous speakers had addressed. org, which has a lot of additional information on the topics today. The last thing that I wanted to address before concluding, is there methane in private water wells in Pennsylvania? Absolutely, and there has been for decades. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 we really need to evaluate. The cause is not Marcellus gas, but the naturally occurring methane that is so prevalent, especially in parts of the northern tier of our Commonwealth. How do we know that? 2 million private water wells in Pennsylvania are contaminated. We are one of the only states, if not the only state in the country, that does not have private water well standards, and I think that's an important step in conjunction with ever-more vigilant protections against spills by the industry, but I think that what we have to really look at is how those wells have become contaminated with methane. /ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 entering an area for operation have pre-existing contamination. This is a cause that is certainly worthy of our focus, and it is time for some honest debate about the cause of that methane in private water wells in Pennsylvania. In conclusion, I appreciate the opportunity to appear here today to discuss these issues relating to the development in the Marcellus Shale. The MSC looks forward to continuing to work with the Council, our partners in Philadelphia on all the issues that will be key to responsible and prosperous development of this resource in the near future. This concludes my prepared comments.
Thank you. We appreciate your testimony. Would you stick around? We're going to ask the panel questions. Next. 111 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Good afternoon, Councilman and members of the Committee. My name is Craig White. I'm the Executive Vice-President and Acting Chief Operating Officer for the Philadelphia Gas Works. I have submitted written testimony. I'm not going to read that, but I would like to make a few brief comments. With respect to the issue at hand, Philadelphia Gas Works shares the concerns of the Delaware River Basin Commission, City Council and the public. We certainly want any of this type of activity done in a way that is in the public's best interest. I do want to clarify one point. The last panel chose to use the term "gas company." We are a local distribution company. Typically those individuals or those entities that are withdrawing gas or extracting gas are considered producers. So we are a local 112 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 distribution company. We have a network of over 6,000 miles of pipeline or pipes within the City of Philadelphia, and we serve 84 percent of the residential houses in the City of Philadelphia. The most important factor is that at the present time and for the last number of decades, we have purchased all of our supply from the Gulf Coast region. That's on shore, off shore, Texas, Louisiana. We do this purchasing under a least cost procurement requirement that's required not only by the state but also by the city ordinance for the purchase of gas supply, which is voted on by the City Council. We have not purchased gas directly from the Marcellus Shale or the Barnett or the Fayetteville or the Haynesville Shale deposits. And there are more than just the four that I named. The reason for that is, we have low cost interstate pipeline capacity on Texas Eastern and Transcontinental that allows 113 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 us to access the cheapest supply at the present time. But, as I said, we are under a least cost procurement requirement, and, of course, if the future led us to a point where we could deliver gas to Philadelphia from the Marcellus Shale at prices much cheaper than what we're paying now or cheaper than what we're paying now, we would look to do that. This is assuming that, of course, the Marcellus Shale is being delivered in an environmentally and correct manner.
Yes. At the present time, we purchase all of our supplies in the Gulf Coast region because of the fact that we can economically purchase that --
The second part of that is, at the present time, we do not 114 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 purchase any supplies, we have nothing under contract with any Marcellus producers, nor do we have any contracts that would deliver Marcellus gas in the future. Now, having said that, I would hope that the Committee would also understand that the network of interstate pipelines across this country is a spider web. The molecules that we purchase are not necessarily the molecules that we get delivered. The term we use is, you can't paint the molecules. So there may be Marcellus gas delivered into underground storage fields that we have under contract that eventually get delivered to Philadelphia, but the procurement process and who we are buying gas from at the present time, as I stated, these are Gulf Coast, on and off shore, Texas, Louisiana suppliers.
That concludes my remarks, and I'm here for any questions. 115 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515
Thank you, panel. Councilman Greenlee, I'm going to defer to you. You have not had any comments.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, everyone. My question is really for Commissioner Brunwasser. Commissioner, today in the Inquirer, they talk about this issue and particularly in comparison to what New York City does as compared to Philadelphia, and there's sort of an intimation -- well, maybe more than intimation here -- by a couple quotes that Philadelphia isn't as proactive, if you will, as New York City, and I know there's some response in the article, but maybe for the record could you just discuss that briefly and say what the differences here are and do you feel comfortable you're doing as much, even in a different way. 116 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Sure. That's a good question. The way we handle our water supply is quite a bit different than New York. New York is the first draw on the Delaware River, and their water is basically pristine. It comes from the Catskill Mountains. And so New York over the years has not had to develop the kind of treatment facilities that we have here in Philadelphia. We have a tremendous amount of filtering of our water, which makes it one of the purest drinking waters in the country. New York has never had to filter their water because it came pristine. Since we are the last draw on the Delaware and we're at the bottom of this 13,000 square mile watershed, Philadelphia has had to develop a tremendous amount of skill and technical prowess in the treating of drinking water. You can see the next time 117 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 you're in the Municipal Services Building, in the basement of the Municipal Services Building, around the core of the building is a display of the history of Philadelphia water, and you can see how terrible the conditions of the rivers were at one time, particularly the Schuylkill, with coal residue getting into the river and turning the river virtually black. So we have a lot of experience, and we also have a great distance at this moment from Marcellus Shale. The Marcellus Shale is approximately a minimum of 100 miles north of Philadelphia on the Delaware. So we have -- we don't have quite the concern that New York has. New York, without all of the filtering and all of the types of treatment that we have, would have a problem if this infiltrated.
But you feel those other protections take care of 118 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 this and, like you said, the distance from Philadelphia? Is that basically it? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Yes. I mean, we are fortunate. We are quite concerned about our neighbors to the north, and our concern -- and that's one of the reasons we're watching this. We're also, out of an abundance of caution, we have been very much involved in this situation and we, as I said, we have made all of our points known to the regulatory agencies, and they have been listening to us.
I appreciate that. Just one more quick question for Mr. White, if I could. I know you said you have not at this point dealt with Marcellus. Do you see a timeframe where you have to make a decision if you will or do you feel comfortable that there's no reason to rush into that?
Well, I think the economics of supply and demand are going 119 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 to drive that. The price of Marcellus Shale gas to deliver to Philadelphia is not economical. There's no direct connection at this point in time. So to build new pipeline capacity is very expensive. The capacity that we have to the Gulf Coast is very cheap. So we have a tremendous advantage. Even with slightly more expensive Gulf Coast supply, we can actually have it delivered to Philadelphia at a more economical price than we could if we were to connect to some of the new proposed projects for pipelines.
We have the connection to the Gulf Coast. As far as the timeframe, I wouldn't even venture a guess. The pricing there, as I said, at the present time, it's higher, but it could move quickly.
Economics 120 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 always place a part, right?
Thank you, Mr. Greenlee. Couple of questions. And I agree that we have come a long way in our evolution by way of water treatment and probably are one of the best water departments in the nation. We've come a long way. For those of you who are not from Philly, the nickname of our water in Philly used to be Schuylkill Punch, but it's gotten so good that we've even bottled it at a time and tried to test the market for that, and maybe in the future do that, and the idea of this hearing is to keep it that way. We have had to evolve as a filtration entity, because we're downstream. Now, we've had some sidebars 121 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 about this, and I want to thank you also. Your resume from being in EPA gives me comfort, even if it's in the industrial side. At least you know your stuff. So I appreciate you being here. A couple of questions. Now, you talked about an EWS system, Early Warning System, that is a part of your department's natural course of business. So could you describe what that is for the public? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Well, it's something we were able to put into place around -- fully put into place, I guess, in 2005. So we've had it -- 2004, 2005. So we've had it around for about six years, and we currently have 50 organizations that belong to this. This is a secure communications and information-sharing system that we have on both the Schuylkill and the -- the Schuylkill watershed and also the lower Delaware watershed, and the 50 members are utilities and industries and 122 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 different organizations that we are hooked into through telephone communications and e-mail that when anything happens in that river that is of any consequence, everyone knows about it as quickly as possible.
Do I understand that to be the Delaware and the Schuylkill? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Both, yes.
What percentage of water do we derive from each river, and which of them, if not both of them, come up under or touch Marcellus Shale? COMMISSIONER BRUNWASSER: Well, let me go to the first question first. We derive about 60 percent of our drinking water from the Delaware, and that's all through the Baxter Water Plant, which is in the Torresdale section 24 of the City. That supports about 60 percent of our customers. 123 9/28/10 - TRANS./ENVIRONMENT - RES. 100515 On the Schuylkill where we have two plants, Queen Lane and Belmont --